Eternal Fighter Zero

Anime Expo 2011 happened a while back and I ended up not going because there were no guests there that I was interested in.  However, there was one thing that I wanted to join, which was the EFZ tourney and meetup organized by the SoCal scene.  They were able to get a good amount of players from all around, so I'm pretty sad for missing this, but that weekend ended up being really busy for me.

Ice beam!

Speaking of EFZ, I randomly decided to search up some vids on nico for it recently to see how the Japanese scene was doing, and I remembered just how good this game was.  EFZ kind of flew under the radar in the American scene, but it had a good run in Japan.  It was released in 2001 by Tasofro as a doujin title, and it has stayed that way the entire time.  One of the reasons I think it stayed a doujin title is because EFZ takes so much from other fighting games.  It's usually very easy to see how older fighting games influenced newer games today, but the stuff you see in EFZ borders on plagiarism.  For example, the character Misuzu has several moves that are pretty much ripped from GG's Testament, and my character Akane has some of Gouki's and Millia's signature moves.  I have a feeling that if EFZ became a major fighting game it would have raised up a lot of intellectual property red flags.

The characters in EFZ all come from KEY, a company that is known for making visual novels.  I haven't played any of their VNs, so I have no knowledge of the backstory of any of the characters.  There are 22 characters in total(23 if you count the boss), which is a pretty big cast for doujin fighting game standards.  The cast is quite diverse too, as there's a good variety of fighting styles present: there's a good amount of rushdown chars, there's a boxer(Kaori), a character with an assist like Carl(Minagi), 5 characters with Morrigan style triangle dashes(Akiko, Ayu, Makoto, Misuzu, Sayuri), and a good deal of defensive/zoning/trap characters as well.  There are no grapplers, though.  There are also a lot of characters that have different "modes" and whose standard play involves switching between them.  For example, the character Mio has a long-range and short-range mode which both have a very different set of normals and specials.  Nanase has a bamboo sword which can actually be tossed away if she does a DP, so her moves change when she's bare-handed.  Another example is the spear girl Mishio, who has very different combos and specials in her Fire and Lightning modes.

Mother vs daughter

The mechanics in EFZ are what would be considered pretty standard for airdasher, or "anime" games in today's context.  Every character has a double jump and an airdash.  You can do a dj and then airdash, but not vice versa.  Airdashes are interesting in that their length can be controlled by how long the forward input is held.  For example, with some characters you can make your airdash drop to the ground quickly by letting go of forward early, and you can make the airdash go on really long by holding forward.  Many normals are jump cancellable on hit and block, and chain combos are the main method of dealing damage.  Chain combos follow the usual weak->medium->strong sequence, while specials can be thrown in anywhere you want in between.  There are throws and airthrows(but no throwbreaks!), ground normals are air unblockable, and most air normals are airdash cancellable.  There is no guard bar, and thus there are no guardcrushes and death by chip damage.  There are two meters: an E force meter(used for ICs and EX moves) that constantly increases, only stopping when that character is getting hit, and an SP gauge(used for supers) that goes from 1-3.  And typical of doujin games, there is no timer.

One of the mechanics in EFZ that really makes it unique among all other fighters is Recoil Guard.  I mentioned earlier that there is no guard bar nor death by chip damage, so at first glance this makes blocking seem really strong.  And in some ways it is, since you can't die if you just block forever.  But you won't, because mixups in this game are ridiculous.  People nowadays talk about "vortexes" and how GG has really strong okizeme; these people haven't played EFZ.  Many characters in this game get 4-way mixups that reset into themselves off of knockdowns.  There's also a lot of characters that get GG style projectile assisted okizeme, where a multi-hit projectile or some fireball with huge blockstun is set up on a character's wakeup, giving the player on offense a lot of time to mix up the opponent.  So how does this relate to Recoil Guard(RG)?  RG is basically just like instant blocking or just defending in other fighting games.  It reduces the blockstun on a guarded attack, and it's also the only way for someone to airguard a ground normal.  In EFZ, the RG window is actually really big and the difference of blockstun is quite significant as well: many safe attack strings become unsafe when RGed.  So RGing is quite strong, and it might seem problematic like it is in Garou MoTW.  But it's not, and it's actually needed: one look at the EFZ frame data will make it very clear as to why.  Everybody in EFZ has Vampire Savior like normals: almost everything is +f on hit and block.  If RG wasn't in the game, some characters would literally have infinite pressure.

Another interesting thing about RG is that when one player does it, the other player can actually counter RG.  This leads to some funny moments in matches where two players get into a big RG war and all you see is the game pausing and characters flashing white.  But it's a nice mechanic because it makes it so that the attacker who got his attack RGed still has options.

One of my favorite parts of the EFZ system is in its juggle meter.  This is a bar that shows up underneath a character whenever they are getting comboed.  It basically shows how much untechable time a move has.  So a move with a lot of stun will have a big bar that drains slowly, while a move with little stun will have a smaller bar that drains fast.  Most fighting game players are probably already used to just feeling out untechable times, but it's nice for the game to show you exactly how much there is for every move.

Another thing I like a lot is that once the bar drains completely, the player that was getting hit is completely invincible during their reeling animation.  One effect of this is that there are no invalid combos in EFZ.  So there's no need to be mashing air tech during combos to prevent invalids, and it also eliminates dumb netplay combos that you might see in other games(ex. Slayer 5k6h on an air opponent).  Air teching is actually really risky in EFZ because you are vulnerable for a short period of time after the tech, so it's very common for people to just let themselves fall to the ground after getting hit by an air combo.  I like this mechanic a lot because it actually helps both players: it forces the player doing the combo to put in the time to get their execution down because of the lack of invalid combos, and the player getting comboed doesn't need to be mashing tech to get out of invalids.

Like many airdash games, EFZ has a Roman Cancel mechanic in it called Instant Charge(IC).  It uses the E force meter which constantly increases.  Pretty much everything can be ICed: normals(hit and block only), specials and supers(hit, block, and whiff), and throws.  What makes the EFZ version of the roman cancel unique is that there are actually two ICs.  There's a red IC, which is basically the normal roman cancel.  It happens whenever an IC is done during the first half of the E force meter, when it's colored red.  The other IC is the blue one, and it happens when an IC is done during the 2nd half of the E force meter, when it's colored light blue.  The blue IC is unique in that it 1)increases the untechable time/juggle meter on all moves, allowing for longer combos and combos that aren't normally possible and 2)decreases the scaling so that every attack does more damage.  In EFZ, the combo counter is actually quite informative, as it also gives information on the scaling of moves through a "Power" indicator.  In the beginning of a combo, the Power will probably be somewhere from 80-100, and at the end it could be at 20-40 power.  Blue IC can really jack up the scaling and make it so that you start combos at 130 power, so most blue IC combos do huge damage.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about okizeme in EFZ, another reason why it's so good in this game is because there is no crossup protection.  Some characters, like the one I use, can really abuse this and create left/right mixups that have a 1f difference between crossup and non-crossup.  Which basically means that the person on defense has to guess in those situations.  And indeed, it's not uncommon to see huge momentum swings in this game.  Knockdowns aren't guaranteed death though: even though EFZ has fewer defensive options than other games, the defensive options that it does have(RG) are really strong.

Another aspect of the game that I like a lot is that it's very ground based.  Many airdash games nowadays have a very diluted version of footsies: very little walking at all, lots of dashing, and most of the game time being spent in the air because of the strength of chicken guarding.  You see this a lot in games like Melty Blood and BlazBlue, which have so many air options that being on the ground is almost disadvantageous.  I could talk about this more, but Xenozip has beaten me to the punch and has written a series of very informative posts about this subject.  EFZ manages to avoid turning into a big jump fest of a game by doing two things.  1st is that the blockstun from chicken guarding is HUGE.  In most games that have a chicken guard mechanic, blockstun is greatly reduced compared to that of ground guarding.  In games like MB and BB, the air blockstun is so minimal that you can double jump almost immediately after so that you can stay in the air even longer.  Not in EFZ, though.  When you chicken guard in EFZ, you are basically going to get dragged down to the ground.  The 2nd thing that EFZ does to avoid making the game too air-based is in airthrow strength.  Airthrows are quite good in EFZ as they have a lot more range than ground throws, and the damage they do is good too.

I don't think there's ever been an official tier list made for EFZ, but from my experience and from all the videos I've watched, the game is pretty balanced.  There are no unplayable characters, and the weaker characters like Doppel and Awake Nayuki all get a good amount of play and have won major tournies.  There are definitely some really strong characters that get played a lot more than others though, like Mishio, Misaki, Mayu, and Shiori. 

I've been talking mostly about the positive aspects of EFZ, but there are some things that I really don't like about it too.  The first, and biggest thing being its command interpreter.  This is actually the reason why I don't play the game that much nowadays.  I really can't stand the command interpreter in this game at all, as it remembers inputs for way too long.  This might have to do with the fact that it's a PC doujin game, so the developers probably intended for the game to be played with a gamepad or keyboard.

The other crappy part of EFZ is its training mode.  The training mode in EFZ doesn't even have a UI: it's controlled by the F# keys on the keyboard.  I'm used to amazing training modes like the ones used in the console ports of GGXX Slash and Accent Core, so it's distressing to me to see a training mode that doesn't even have a dummy record function.

If a new EFZ came out, or even if the game got remade on a next-gen console with good training mode and better command interpreter, I would definitely be hype to play it.  I would like for it to have good netplay though, because the current netplay for EFZ is total garbage.